In the city of Irvine, beige is beautiful

By Jacob levy, editor and publisher

I’m bored with beige. Not the color itself, but its use as a cliché when writers describe Irvine. I like a well-written OC Register story about Irvine’s diversity that cited our “sense of community and shared stake in the quality of Irvine’s neighborhoods, school system and public spaces.”

We love that. But then there’s this: “Their meticulously planned community may appear beige and cookie-cutter....”

And did you read the brilliant six-part true crime story in the LA Times written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Christopher Goffer?

The Irvine Police Department comes off looking great in the story, and deservedly so: “Duff was struck by how thoroughly the Irvine police had investigated a crime in which the victim had suffered no physical harm.”But Goffer just can’t let the city alone: “Outsiders mocked Irvine as a place of sterile uniformity...”

“The muted beige strip malls teemed with tutoring centers… “

“Irvine — where so many of the big houses looked pretty much alike…

And finally, this: “It had happened in Irvine, no less — the county’s model, master-planned city — inviting people to contemplate the ugliness that seethed behind closed doors in places that overpromised order and niceness and green.”

Ouch, Chris!​But we get it, we really do. There’s just so much to love about Irvine. Some writers can’t disguise how much they wish they lived here. In fact, it turns them positively beige with envy.